Midland Remembers: The Judd Keppel Story Part II

Updated 9:00 am, Thursday, May 18, 2017

Jean Sorg and Judd Keppel were married Oct. 18, 1948, at St. Brigid's Catholic Church in Midland. Their marriage was one of equals. Here they are celebrating their wedding anniversary.

Jean Sorg and Judd Keppel were married Oct. 18, 1948, at St. Brigid's Catholic Church in Midland. Their marriage was one of equals. Here they are celebrating their wedding anniversary.

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Anna Pellerin Keppel poses on the streets of San Francisco with her daughter, Virginia, and her son, Judd, in 1947. Left a widow with two children to raise, Anna returned to Midland to open a beauty shop in 1924 and later went into the real estate business. She was a woman ahead of her times. less

Anna Pellerin Keppel poses on the streets of San Francisco with her daughter, Virginia, and her son, Judd, in 1947. Left a widow with two children to raise, Anna returned to Midland to open a beauty shop in ... more

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This photo was taken the day that Tim Keppel purchased Judd's Rental from his dad in 1984. Judd's Rental celebrated 50 years in business on May 6.

This photo was taken the day that Tim Keppel purchased Judd's Rental from his dad in 1984. Judd's Rental celebrated 50 years in business on May 6.

Midland Remembers: The Judd Keppel Story Part II

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(Part I of The Judd Keppel Story was devoted to his establishment of the business he called Judd’s Rental, which celebrated its 50th anniversary on May 6. Part II will tell the story of the two women who played major roles in Judd Keppel’s life: his mother, Anna Pellerin Keppel, and his wife, Jean Sorg Keppel.)

When Anna Keppel woke up the morning of Oct. 12, 1918, she had no promotion that the day would end in tragedy. It was Indian Summer and the Duluth, Minnesota area was tinder-dry. Slash left by lumberjacks and pine trees, their needles parched for water, were easy prey for fire. The fire began on Oct. 10 when a Great Northern locomotive set a small fire at Milepost 62, northwest of Cloquet, which smoldered for two days before being fanned by a cold front into a raging inferno that consumed villages and towns over a period of 15 hours, leaving 453 dead and another 80 seriously burned.

Anna, John and their baby were in a car when they realized they were doomed if they stayed in the car. They jumped into a dry four foot crock well to escape but sparks showered down on them. The baby suffered burns, which took her life. Anna, amazingly, was unscathed, but John’s lungs were seared inhaling the smoke.

Anna’s story begins when her father, Odillon Pellerin, was born in Provence, France where his family owned a vineyard. When he was 18, he left home and traveled to Canada, married and had eight children: Ambrose, Fred, Conrad, Odillon, Anna, Mamie, Louise and Virginia. When Anna was a child, Odillon heard about property to be homesteaded in Larkin Township near a small town named Midland. He moved his family there shortly and to the Pellerin children, the farm in Larkin Township was always home.

Anna worked her way through LaSalle University earning a business degree and became an overseas buyer for Marshall Fields in Chicago. In the summertime she returned to the Pellerin farm where she had grown up. Anna’s brothers Fred and Conrad worked on the railroad in Duluth, Minnesota, with a man named John Keppel. When the slack summer season came along, they invited John to return home with them to the farm in Larkin Township. John met Anna and fell in love.

For two years John Keppel asked Anna Pellerin to marry him and received the same answer. No. Then John called her and said, “This is the last time I’m asking you to marry me...” Anna replied, “If you can be here (in Chicago) in 24 hours, I will marry you.” John Keppel rode a train all night to get to Chicago. He had gone to college with the Cardinal of the Catholic Church in Chicago. John called him and asked him to make arrangements for them to marry.

After their marriage, John took Anna back to Duluth, Minnesota to live. Their first child was a baby daughter they named Mary Jean. But their happiness was short-lived. The fire of Duluth-Clouet-Moose Lake changed their lives forever. After the death of their first baby in the fire of Oct. 12, 1918, Anna became pregnant with their second child and they named her Virginia. The next year they had a son, naming him John. But Virginia had trouble saying the word “brother” and said, “judder.” And that’s how John became Judd.

When John Keppel died in 1923, Anna decided to return home to Midland, arriving “with two suitcases and two children.” In 1924 she opened the Keppel Beauty Shoppe at 133 Rodd St. She was the first female licensed in Michigan to cut men’s hair.

With the death of her brother Ambrose, who had never married, Anna inherited his estate. Anna shrewdly decided to invest in real estate. Cambridge, Dartmouth and Princeton Court are a few of the streets she developed by bartering. She would go to one business and tell them she would give them so many lots if they would put the streets in for her. To another company she gave lots if they would put in the sewers for her.

A single mother raising a son and a daughter, she was also a business woman in a time when it wasn’t an accepted practice. Anna Keppel worked hard until she was 85 in 1966. She was at the Farmers Market, stepped off the curb and broke her hip. She spent the next 10 years in a nursing home, but even in the bad times she made plans for a new beauty shop, which never materialized. Anna Keppel lived a life filled with challenges finding peace at last when she passed away in 1976.

Judd Keppel, the young man that Jean Sorg would marry in 1948, graduated from high school and entered Seminary but World War II came along and Judd dropped out of Seminary to join up. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 and was honorably discharged from the Army in 1946. Looking around for a good business to go into, he decided to buy the Sanford Hardware owned by Ed Sorg.

Ed and his wife, Joyce, had three daughters, their oldest was Jean. Jean was born in Highland Park, Michigan. She was two years old when her family moved to the little village of Sanford. Jean’s grandfather was Dr. Blakeley who had his medical practice in the Sanford area. Jean was in high school in Coleman at the time. She was 15 years old when her dad sold the hardware to Judd Keppel. Jean continued working in the hardware for Judd just as she had worked for her dad Ed. Judd and Jean had their first date when she was 17. She graduated in May 1948 and that night Judd proposed to her. They were married Oct. 18, 1948 in St. Brigid’s Catholic Church in Midland and began married life in a cottage on Peterson Drive on Sanford Lake that they rented for $25 a month.

Michael came first, followed by Patrick, Timothy, Maureen, Kevin, Daniel and then twins Kathleen and Karen. Karen died when she was one day old but Kathleen lived until she was 9 in 1973. Jean said, “It was so quick. One day she had a pain in her elbow and we took her to the doctor. It was cancer. In six months, she was gone.”

By the time Patrick was born, Judd sold the Sanford hardware and went to work on the new interstate highway doing construction work. They moved into Midland and were on Birchfield. Then the highway construction work was over and Judd needed another job. His mother’s old beauty shop was vacant and Judd decided to go into the rental business, naming it Judd’s Rental. The business, now owned by son Tim and his wife, Patty, just celebrated 50 years in business.

Jean Keppel, still a vital, active woman at 87, has embraced a life filled with both happiness and sadness. She gave birth to eight children, has 22 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren. A man named F. A. Bucchianeri wrote, “It’s a blessed thing to love and feel loved in return.” And Jean Sorg Keppel knows exactly what he meant.